"I'm writing to inform you that the release team discussed Drop or Fix Fallback Mode yesterday. We've come to the conclusion that we can't maintain fallback mode in reasonable quality, and are better off dropping it." Gnome-fallback has been my refuge, as I find both Unity and Gnome 3's shell unusable. Yes, we have been warned this would happen. I thought the cost of maintaining gnome-panel would be so low that it might never need to happen. But as it appears, it is deemed necessary. As for me, I'm bound for something Qt, as I am very angry at Gnome for abandoning its 'classic' users.

Not only when it is recorded at low levels, that's the whole point (of dynamic compression, how it's used in Loudness War, etc.) - but, yes, changing the sound somewhat.

At the very least it would tend to make noise more prominent. If the processing is simple (as is to be expected in such general user playback solutions) it could also introduce clipping of louder moments (really short moments).

Generally, that's a discussion more for hydrogenaudio.org (one of the better ~audio resources on the web, with a strict no-BS policy, adhering to essentially scientific method, properly performed blind tests)